


aphrodite

by ruruka



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 05:04:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14969705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka
Summary: sonosuke thinks about ruruka.





	aphrodite

i. if you were a junkie, i'd be your fix.

He doesn't think it saintly of him in total to allow her to carry herself this way.

Not that she's so dastardly a cretin to require taming, not a witch nor a wasp, a meringue of a sweet young woman with stars at every fingertip. But her centimeters stack short, and he's always there to lift her at the middle for a better reach, where novas will burn through the fibers of each palm and she'll drip from the lashes to pride. _I did it, I did it!_ she'll cry in such a glory, one that holds no annotations to credit the step ladder, but step ladders ask nothing in return to being stomped upon day out day in, they receive nothing. He himself claims gift after gift the whole shine through; he's fed he's kissed he's told just how handsome he is with pinches to the face that leave never their sting. He's got his Ruruka, so no, he isn't a step ladder, and his Andou Ruruka is nothing shy of an angel and he'll spend weeks carving the blade just especially for the tongue that dare defy that.

...Though he's allowed to ponder on some things. He's allowed to think back on a close decade at each others hips, on when her second would not brave the bare cold as it does now, but that must be what one bears in devastation. He's allowed to think her heart, her big beautiful heart of glitter and gold, may hold within it the slightest malice- hold it tight as cell doors with a swallowed key ring. Outside being his Ruruka, she is Ruruka, belonging to the world and to herself and to whatever God may want her (and if she were asked, the answer would come a fork tongued _no one at all)_. But- point, she's human. And humans are dirty playthings for that very same God to toss around by the scruffs, get tired of once the birthday ends and beg there be a toy store trip.

Putting two and two together (he's quite skilled with numbers, being so precise in every last measurement every last second) would mean that in being so human, she's tarnished just the same. That's math, _fine_ , but he's dirty, too. Izayoi Sonosuke is a filthy rat bastard who spends his days crafting war weaponry, a mean old schmuck that loves the summertime when ladies shed their layers, knows he could get the pen he'd knocked from the table himself but loves to watch her do it regardless. He's dirty and mean and terrible for watching just the same as she shreds her nails down unwitting flesh and feels not a flick of lust to intervene.

Dirty mean terrible _dramatic_ ; she throws the catty comment every so often, will say she hadn't liked soandso's shoes at work today once they've placed themselves in bed, skin porcelain behind pink lace and ponytails, and bear in mind the juxtaposition of what details he can recall now (dirty he's dirty). Andou isn't a jackal so always on a hunt. No, she's, she's any sort of wild animal, but he'll call her a cat for now. A big round fluffy white ragdoll, with a bell on the collar and a taste for luxury just like she'd always described her dream of owning (and- _step_ -he'd never been so cautious up their apartment stairs as he had the day his left coat pocket had been full of squirming fluff). It's asininity to beg a house cat's claws sheathed in the same breath she's flicked in the face. That hand will be retracted in ribbons, and she'll go on licking her paws and he'll lift her to his chest for a vewy sterwn hug of discipwine. That'll teach her.

ii. if you were a critic, i'd be your pick.

There is no certain chance he'd call her mean without the firsthand lesson. Biased, he's biased to think her so endlessly precious down to every last curve, knowing never a fury whipped his way. And he isn't sure just exactly who's spitting all the assumptions, but he'll spit right back to pinch them rose. He knows just what she's capable of, seen it in those paths that have dared cross her own, and she's never the submissive in bother's face. But he's grateful for it; he's conscious now of how irritating it is to leave one goddamned sip in the fridge's carton, and each pretty little manicure squishing his cheeks through the night are sure to remind to calm his chainsaw snores.

And she picks and prods and plays the critic, but in the face of her love you'll be blinded. His Ruruka adores him to no end, summer Sundays spent sprawled out on sheets, moaning at the sweat beneath her bangs yet whimpering for his big spoon warmth regardless. In grade school she'd asked him to be her muse, spent the afternoon dolling his face up with her hundred yen glitter gloss makeup kit, and he'd looked into the little plastic Hello Kitty shaped mirror turned his way afterward and saw the ugliest mess of a man the world should know, but there's nothing but beauty in his Ruruka's smile when she's happy with herself. He'll be her model, he'll be her muse, he'll be the stage mom that hollers the lungs raw for their pageant princess if that's what his pretty pretty princess so desired.

He'd only felt mildly bothered once she'd pulled the mirror back that day and proclaimed out for the other beside him to remove her mask, come on come on, it's your turn!

iii. i'd be your anything.

Perhaps it would have better suited him to be pleased by their playing. It had been so kind then, when she'd lead them both through patches of grass that tempted their elbows, and they'd all sit in that middle of nowhere land and they'd be luminaries. An after school playdate (and they'd been much too old to call it that, but she's always been cute as ten thousand buttons in whatever she lilts) with her mother laying out three butter cookies from the tin in the cabinet and sending them on their way upstairs, he remembers this one too vivid, the way she'd grinned over a shoulder while cajoling them all into her bedroom to spend the hot August afternoon in cool. He'd laid himself to her comforter with legs dangled for the floor, peering up at the star stickers across her ceiling so finely that he'd caught only in the peripheral what had led up to her sudden fit of stamping and huffing. It had happened, Andou standing there in her four feet of fury, and Kimura had knelt there in her paisley overalls and tears in the eye of shock while receiving the brunt of those ragdoll claws.

"You broke it! You broke it, I told you to be careful!" Twinned had the sheen of her own eyes grown milky, and that's when he'd shot up into posture to watch over the prattling; Andou had turned to him with those saucers and pointed hellfire at the third. "She broke the arm off my favorite doll! Stupid, stupid, stupid! My-My dad gave that to me, s-stupid!"

No matter how desperately she'd dubbed it an accident, Kimura hadn't been invited to sit with them during snack break at school the next day, and Izayoi had dreamed of the time before they'd stumbled into those crushed puppies that one rainy afternoon. In a dozen ways, he equates Kimura Seiko to a mutt met with a Civic's front bumper, too, tattered and shivering at the most subtle storm, and he'd watched her huddle in a far corner desk with the group surrounding all vacant, but a juice box straw pressed to his lips had drawn his attention back where it need be. Strawberry banana.

iv. i'd be your everything, oh baby.

It had taken three hours for him to reattach the doll's arm, to smooth it to the perfection of never having lost. He'd presented it to her in all the humility he still possesses, sweet little Yui in her sweet little spaghetti strap sundress in his palms before her, surgery a success, and perhaps he's so fascinated by the art of welding now from this first experience, and perhaps her shriek of delight had been shrill enough to rattle the drums within his either ear, but he adores every last bit of her. He'll fix a million dolls if it'll make her hug him like that again. But, oh, he hadn't had to at all, she's his all his all his, and the only doll left to fix is the one that shares the blanket with him at night. Fix, not in the sense that she's not already the most ethereal perfection he's had the privilege to lay his eyes on, merely that that heart of hers he'd mentioned is missing a few chips. Sorrow has been her color so often in this life she's led, sorrows she spills in the midnight warmth of her head on his chest, where she fiddles with the curl of her hair and apologizes for talking so much. The pieces to her that haven't dared be allowed past plush lips in the face of any other. So that's his deal, his big fat sizzling problem with everyone else in the world who has a single complaint to make of her, quicker than shit to _judge_ her, alienate her from the crowd; nobody knows his Ruruka, very hardly even herself, no matter how wrung dry that line is. No one knows his Ruruka like he does. No one knows her or how she is or why she does what she does, and he'll be damned straight to hell and back before any scum's allotted the filth from their mouth.

Protective, right, that's the word, hovering the line of smothering, maybe. But he has to, because no one else will, no one else ever has. She's a little girl stranded on the tropics with storms sucker punching so relentlessly. He's shelter. Shelter _ing_ \- it's up for debate. Cannot he once ever let another close to her, though, for her. No one's allowed close to her, because no one knows the Andou Ruruka that wakes her boyfriend up with kisses just to lay hotcakes on his plate, or the Andou that tucks her makeup-less morning face beneath the faucet to gargle away Colgate, snorts when she laughs too hard, beats herself a tremendous torturing every other hour for her own imperfections. They can't approach the proximity where they'll be able to criticize, because they. _don't. know._

(Altogether, it may be counterproductive, but while he sees her as the heavensent saint he knows himself to be a man of vices as any other).

Andou Ruruka is his everything. On a time or two, he's wondered just exactly what his life would be like without her from there on, how he'd function on his very own, and each time or two he's remembered there's a whole shed full of blade metal out back, and he'd nodded and he'd gone back to his pancakes.

Head over heels for the woman who's saved his life everyday for close to ten years. He thinks that's appropriate, wouldn't it be so? Of course she deserves more than plain devotion, she deserves the whole world with whipped cream on top, but he can't bring himself close to reciprocating all she's done for him, he thinks, all the joy she's brought to him and the will to fight onward. That, _that_ is his Ruruka, the one behind closed doors that the hinges creak so thickly on, where she's sweet and she's shy and she's damaged and she grips the sheets and sobs from time to time, because this Earth is so cruel she can't stand it, so, right, the next bastard at the office to say her pumpkin bread was dry will be just _begging_ for it after a session of bonding time with him.

v. i mean what i say.

But- what had he started out his rambling with? When it's about her, his thoughts could trail for days, lacks the speech to move it forward though quite likes the quiet contemplation to himself while welding a sword, a tiara, a size seven diamond ring. His reticence, he _prays_ it does not render her uncertain of his adoration. And _damn it!_ He's done it again, gone on and on thinking about her breathtaking smile, the stars in her eyes, the way she stirs an extra scoop of sugar in her tea the way her thighs squish behind tight skirts the way she's so encompassed him with her _beauty_ , outside inside and everywhere in between. He scratches the tip of a glove to his jawline. She's, to sum it up, too gorgeous for words. And he loves her. By God, does he love her.

"Sonooosuke!" Let him just _feel_ her now, let him palaver on about her every last detail, he's begging. The little stumble of steps into his blacksmith shed, a sanctuary for him to work that she'd pretty pleeeased their landlord to use in exchange for lawn care. He'd made certain that that lawn was perfect for her bared soles to walk upon, too, just the day before when she'd trailed out upon it to hand him a sweating glass of pink lemon soda and sit on the sidelines, compliment his work beneath her big sun hat he'd plucked off as soon as he'd finished to dip her down and kiss her silly in the soak of the hot sunshine. Her head rests bare this time rather, matches the cream of each leg up into shorts and either arm into sheer blouse. A hand fans her face that's poked into the shed. Each side of her hair sits in two tiny tiny tails. She's his everything. "You've been out here for hours... It's _sooo_ hot, I think I'm melting."

For her, he sets down the bits of metal in his hold, straightens the crick in his back to face her proper. Either glove of thick leather begins to pull from his weathered hands, but he catches her staring, makes him pause in the heat of it. Her eyes glisten as they meet his. Then she's all smirks, pads over to him not as the fierce lioness but the domestic breed curled up in his lap to purr harmonies, walks over to him with a finger to his cheek that comes back smeared in black oil. "Too hot out here for my baby," she coos to him. "Come inside for a bit and get washed up, hm? I think there's enough milk left for me to make some ice cream."

The gloves have peeled from him to find bared hands sick with the same grease marks, ones he's been lashed for leaving on their linens, wipe now instead against a rag as he watches her, the lift of her fingers working through his dampened hair so gently, a ladybird's wings pattering calloused skin. "Ruruka," he says to her, staid as silk, draws her touch away to clasp within his own.

There's a thousand and one things he'd like to say to her right now, but he settles for scooping her up into his arms in such a flash to render her awed, delights in the giggling as she cups his face to press lipgloss marks across it carried out onto the fresh trimmed lawn.

By God, does he love her.


End file.
